


In The Echoes

by Jemisard



Category: The Losers (Comic)
Genre: Canon Character of Color, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-03
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-13 19:39:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/828070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jemisard/pseuds/Jemisard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He walked into their lives in cowboy boots and a leather jacket and Jake wonders if he's being given a second chance after his life ended in an atomic blast that he watched form a distance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He was a ghost that brushed past them on the busy sidewalk, a whiff of leather and gun oil trailed from a long tail of ruddy brown hair.

It was like being sucker punched.

Pooch was there, grabbing his arm and pulling him before he even managed to start turning, a hand over his mouth as he sucked in a breath to speak. “No. It wasn’t.”

He stared down at Pooch, cold and numb with the shock. “But-”

Even muffled, Pooch knew what he was trying to say, just pressed firmer. “No, Jake. It _wasn’t_. I know you think it might have been, but we both know it isn’t _him_.”

He didn’t try to fight that statement, body sinking with defeat into Pooch’s strong hands. “It smelt like him.”

“One, that’s creepy, don’t say that again. Two, I don’t care if he walked up to us and introduced himself by name, because we both know it isn’t him. He’s dead, Jake.” Pooch shook him firmly, not unkindly. “He’s dead.”

“He’s dead,” Jake dutifully agreed. “But he was so much like him, Pooch.”

“I know.” Pooch’s hands finally loosened, supporting rather than pinning him. “Come on, lets go get a drink. You don’t look so good.”

“I don’t feel great,” he admitted. “Drink sounds good. Five or six sounds better.” And was a better promise for sleep without the nightmares he knew were going to come back again that night.

*~*~*

_“I’m comin’ back for you, Cougar.” Jensen checked the fastenings of his wet suit, trying not to look to the floor and the trails of blood over it. “The Sheik, he’s gonna have a rescue ship all standin’ by. We’ll ammo up an’ come back team-handed. Even if they find you, ain’t nobody gonna fuck with a guy’s got a nuke in his lap--”_

_On the floor, Cougar struggled to lift his head to look at him. Holding the assault gun was taking most of his effort and the pain was draining his olive skin to an ashen grey colour that almost hurt to look at. “S-sure Jensen...” He wheezed in a pained breath and more blood slid from the bullet hole in his lower chest. “Whatever you say...”_

_And fuck, did that hurt. The brave face was all for him, he knew that. It was his best friend trying to give him that illusion to cling to, to hold back to grief until he was safely out of the explosive range of the bomb._

_“Still... they ever get the drop on me...” Wheeze. “‘Least I’ll go out...” Wheeze. “With a bang.”_

_“Motherfucker,” Jensen choked out. It was almost funny, in that way that he wanted to burst into tears and never stop crying because this wasn’t how it was meant to end. He looked away, trying to stop himself._

_He couldn’t. He fell to his knees like a supplicant and threw himself into Cougar’s waiting arms, clinging onto him. Not so long ago, it had been Cougar clinging to him with relief and desperate need to prove he was alive._

_Now it was him clinging, and he didn’t want to let go. While they stayed like this, it was okay, they were just hugging it out because they could, because sometimes they both needed it and it wasn’t a last, agonising moment before their friendship ended in a grave of atomic ash and bullets._

_Cougar pushed him away gently, then with more force until he had to move away. He stood up, feet sliding in the blood–Cougar’s blood– and handed over the case._

_“There, you got the last of my ammo clips, anythin’ else you need...?”_

_“Just one thing...” Cougar’s hand reached down, the bag they brought the wet suits in, picking up the battered, leather hat. And that was worse, watching him set it on his head and adjust it to sit just right, because Jensen had really wanted to keep that hat, just to keep something of Cougar, but Cougar needed the hat, needed to be Cougar the Cowboy Man that had lifted those children onto the chopper all that time ago._

_“Rock,” he croaked out, peeking up at Jensen from under the brim of the hat._

_Jensen left without another word. There was nothing left to say. Nothing to do but make sure that this wasn’t pointless, that he could fulfil his best friend’s last wish and get the hell out there and live. Live for both of them._

_Grief could come later._

_Grief, overwhelming loss and pain, could come when he was alive to feel it._

“Cougar.”

He opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling. He never woke violently, no screaming or kicking, just a terrible crushing weight of loss that told him the truth.

He was alive.

His face twisted with grief, a sob wrenching his body before he managed to get it under control again. He threw an arm over his eyes, willing the tears to stop now he was awake to do so.

When he could do it with a blank face, he sat up and turned on the bedside light. His pillow was wet with tears shed as he dreamed, so he threw it in the corner and propped himself up against the headboard.

He wouldn’t go back to sleep that night. All he could do was not wake Pooch, Jolene or the girls as he opened his computer and started the familiar, soothing patterns of his rounds of his current programs.


	2. Chapter 2

He walked into the bar with a muted click of cowboy boots on polished wood and a curl of that bitter familiar scent of gun oil and leather.

“Sunnuva’,” Pooch spat out.

Jensen didn’t speak for a moment, staring at his bottle before draining the rest of it. “Want another, Pooch?"

“Jake-”

“Yes or no?” He was already standing. “Because I need something a bit stronger.”

“Fuckin’ idiot. Get me one. Don’t stick your foot in it.”

Apparently Pooch recognised a lost cause and was going to let Jake go for it rather than try and stop him. Jake appreciated the lack of attempted violence and headed for the bar.

Each step seemed to take longer than the last, looking at the broad shoulders, the curl of the dark ponytail against a leather jacket. As he drew level, he could smell gun oil, pick the bulge of a shoulder holster, finally, finally see his face.

It wasn’t him.

He knew that. He knew it, because he left Cougar, dying, strangely content, saw the explosion that had started from the bomb nestled in the cradle of Cougar’s weakening body.

But it was still a blow.

The man glanced to him. He was handsome in that same rugged way that Cougar had, clean shaven but his mouth twitched into a similar smile. The impersonal smile shared between strangers at a bar, but still a smile.

Dark eyes that didn’t move with the smile, heavy with things that could never be unseen.

“Same again?”

He stopped staring and looked back to the barman. “Um, no, two whiskeys. Doubles. No ice.” And then, because if Pooch wasn’t going to fight him making a fool of himself, he’d make sure to push that to the limits, to turned to the stranger. “Want something? On me, you’re new, you look like you need a friend.”

“ _Gracias_ ,” the man murmured.

Behind them, Jake heard Pooch’s bottle hit the table as he slammed it down.

“You’re... really not from around here,” Jake prodded. “Go on, Mick, get us a third for my new friend who isn’t from around here.” It was easy to fall into words and gestures, like nothing was happening, like this was just him, loud and too friendly.

“Spain,” the man offered.

“Really not around here. I’m Jake, Jake Jensen, that’s my buddy, Pooch.” He nodded to Pooch.

“Esteban Caro.” Offered with a hand which Jake shook.

“Esteban. Cool name.” He grabbed two of the tumblers as they were pushed to them. “What brings you to America?”

The question drew Esteban to follow him as he walked back to the table and Pooch’s vaguely disapproving look.

The man shrugged slightly as an answer, gaze downcast.

“Oh, like that,” Jake replied. “Yeah, I hear you. Needed something new, different. Get away from it all.”

Esteban looked up, his gaze slightly bewildered. “ _Si_. How did-?”

“I know?” Jake smiled slightly and looked to his glass. That look was a reminder, that it wasn’t Cougar, even if for a brief moment, it had sort of felt like having him around again. “I guess I’m just good at reading people.”

“You are, _psicólogo_?”

Pooch almost spat out his whiskey and started choking instead.

“It’s not that funny,” Jake complained. “No. I’m a computer programmer, not a psychologist. But my mom was a con artist, so I got good at reading people young.”

“Con artist?” Esteban shuffled closer, listening.

“Yeah, like, confidence trickster. Someone who pretends one thing to convince people to give them things. Usually money.” He grinned. “Anyway, I’m not one of those either. Not since the Army stopped paying me.”

Esteban smiled at the joke and for a moment, a brief flash of a moment, the knot that had tied itself in Jake’s chest in that pipe room undid a little.

“So, let me tell you this story, Pooch ‘n’ me, we go way back, Army buddies, let me tell you about the last barbecue that Pooch tried to hold.”

Jake relaxed into his storytelling mode and tuned out the way Pooch watched him in favour of his new, quietly attentive friend.

*~*~*

Pooch dragged Jake home after three hours, fifteen rounds and an exchange of email addresses and phone numbers with a promise to help Esteban settle into the city.

Jake thought it was most unfair and wasn’t hesitant in telling Pooch that. “I like him. He’s quiet and he listens. You don’t listen. Because you’re busy being blissfully happy with your wife and little girls.”

“Shut up, Jensen,” Pooch sighed. “You’re drunk.”

“Your face is drunk.”

“Jake.” Pooch’s voice was heavy with emotion. “I don’t want you doing something dumb and getting hurt.”

“I constantly do dumb things. You usually laugh at me.”

“With you. And this isn’t the same.” They paused at a red light, idling. “Are you going to contact him?”

“You don’t want me to.”

“I don’t want you doing it for the wrong reasons.”

“What’s the wrong reason?” Jake pushed himself upright as they accelerated away. “Because he’s alone in a new country, in a new city and he’s a decent guy out of the Army and looking for new friends?”

“You know the wrong reason, Jake!” Pooch pulled over to the side, jamming on the handbrake and hazard lights. “It’s not fucking right for you to cling to this because he reminds you of Cougar. He’s. Not. Cougar.”

“I know! Do you fucking think I will ever forget that? I know he’s not Cougs, I just enjoyed spending some time with him, it wasn’t a crime, Pooch!” He took off his seatbelt, throwing open the door.

“Jake, get back in the fucking care, you lily assed Loser!”

“There are no more Losers, _Linwood_.” Jake slammed the door and stormed off along the road towards the pavement, flipping off a guy who blared his horn at him.

Pooch swore out the window, but there was nowhere good to turn and he had promised Jolene he’d be back.

With another curse, he pulled back into traffic. Jake would turn up when he was in a better mood.


	3. Chapter 3

It took the rest of the night and the best part of the next day before Jake finally turned up.

“Three months ago, I couldn’t have fucking looked at him without remembering that day.”

Pooch looked up from chopping vegetables, not surprised that Jake had just wandered through his house to find him. “Stop picking my front door. It was locked.”

“Your face is locked. It’s not because I think he’s Cougar, okay? I know he’s not. More than you, I _know_ he’s not Cougar and that’s why, okay? Because three months ago, all I would’ve seen was that last moment he looked at me and six months before that I probably would’ve had another fucking flashback and pounced the poor bastard but this is now and I know he’s not him.” Jake helped himself to the fresh punch Pooch made for the girls for after school.

“So why?” He kept cutting, neat and even, gaze briefly going to his amputated finger and back to what he was doing.

“Because I like quiet people and he looks like he needs a friend as much as I do. A friend who isn’t married with children and a mortgage.”

“Fuck you, Jake, the Pooch has no mortgage.”

“No, I know.” He felt Jake move up next to him, rinsing the glass he’d used and then standing there, shoulder to shoulder with him. “So, leave it, okay? Let me do this and make my own mistakes and tell me I told you so when you have to bail me because I tied him up and made him wear a cowboy hat.”

Pooch couldn’t stop the grin. “You’re an idiot.”

“Yeah, but I’m a smarter idiot than you’ll ever be, Porteous.” He sighed slightly. “Tell the girls I love ‘em.”

“Not staying?”

“Nah. Apartment needs a clean, might call Beth while I’m there. I pay for the place, I should stay there sometimes and not always crash here.”

“You’re welcome here.” He was. Not because of guilt, or duty. Pooch and Jolene had both tried to make that clear. Jake was family, and he was always welcome to come and stay in the ‘spare room’. It was a joke of a name, no one else ever stayed and Jake slept there more than he did at his own home.

“Maybe tomorrow. Might go out and visit Jenny instead.”

Then Jake was gone, the door closing with a soft click behind him. Pooch shook his head. He wasn’t Jake’s father, brother or keeper, but most days, he was all that was left to look after him.

He pushed the thoughts aside.

Like Jake had said, he was a big boy. He could look after himself.

Pooch hoped.

*~*~*

Returning to the apartment, Jake could officially say he’d been there more in the last two days than he had the whole fortnight before.

It was still in a state of chaos from the night before. He’d come home after another few hours of clubs and drinking and taken some of his drunk anger out on his mattress and pillows before crashing out in a stupor at seven in the morning.

He winced as something cracked when he tried to step over his haphazardly thrown quilt; a glance turned up a pair of cheap novelty glasses that he didn’t remember owning. He dropped them in the bin on his way to the bed, dropping the quilt in a pile on the bare mattress.

His life was a pit. He groaned and sat on his bed, nursing his head in his hands.

Cougar would have been hitting him with his hat if he was alive, thumping him with the battered leather until he got off his ass and started doing _something_ more productive than getting drunk and mooching around with Pooch and Jolene and their girls.

If Cougar was alive, he wouldn’t be living in an apartment by himself moping though, so it wasn’t really a helpful line of thought.

His phone rang. He tried to ignore it, but it was vibrating against his groin in a not particularly pleasant way. He dug it out, didn’t recognise the number but thought trolling a call centre but might fun. _Buon giorno._

“... Jensen?”

His heart did not skip a beat, though the slightly painful wrench in his chest made it feel like it had. “E-Esteban?”

“ _Si._ ”

This wasn’t Esteban’s number. He had that programmed into his phone. “Hi! Sorry, I just, so thought you were a call centre then, sorry ‘bout that, how are you?!” He flopped back onto his bed.

“I, _lo siento_ , I do not have anyone else to call.”

His voice was heavy and quiet and somber. Jake found himself sitting up, leaning back on one elbow and pressing the phone closer to his ear. “Hey, are you okay?”

“I... need someone to come, _la comisaria_.”

“The police sta- you need bail posted.” He could feel himself grinning. “Yeah, sure, tell me where and I’ll be there as fast traffic allows, okay?”

“ _Gracias_.”

Jake jotted down the details on the back of his hand, the grin still on his face when he hung up and grabbed his keys to head out again.

*~*~*

The charge was minor, but being a foreign national with a less than perfect grasp of English hadn’t endeared Esteban to anyone and the cops had wanted some assurance that they hadn’t caught a big time gangster on a small time charge.

Youth. Jake would admire it if he wasn’t busy mocking it relentlessly.

He escorted Esteban out. “So, what did you actually do?”

The smaller man shrugged slightly and sighed. “Drunk and disorderly. Last night.”

He smelt like it as well, but Jake didn’t like to presume the charge was for disorderly. “You shouldn’t drink alone, makes anyone belligerent. Still, the drunk tank isn’t that bad, and they won’t charge this time. Too much paperwork for them, especially with you not being a citizen. Easier to just give a slap on the wrist and move it on to someone else. Like me.” He grinned. “You look awful. You don’t smell so great either. You need a lift home?”

The openly hopeful look on Esteban’s face was endearing. “That would be good, _gracias_.”

“ _De nada_.” He nodded to his car. “That’s us.”

“Maybe, you will let me buy you a drink after. A thank you.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Jake promised, but he knew he was grinning and blushing a little, ridiculously pleased at the offer. “But sure, that’d be great.”


	4. Chapter 4

“I think your friend Pooch does not like me much.”

Jake looked up over the rim of his glasses before pushing them back up his nose. “Nah. It’s not that. Pooch is just protective of me. I do dumb things. A lot.”

“And I am a dumb thing?”

He almost choked on the mouthful of beer with the image _that_ produced. Esteban thumped him on the back while he recovered his breath and wits.

“That was, poorly worded.”

“You’re good.” He coughed a last time and polished off the bottle of beer. “You’re not a dumb thing. You just, you remind me of someone I knew.” He hurried through the words, not wanting to bring up the memories. “Pooch wanted to make sure I wasn’t like, confused and knew who you were. Because I’ve _ever_ been the type to get confused about that.” He paused. “Did that make sense?”

Esteban frowned slightly, clearly rerunning the statement in his mind. “I- yes?”

“You can use Spanish if you prefer. I understand it fine, just mangle it when I try speaking it.” He leaned forwards. “Honestly? My niece speaks it better than I do and she’s _nine_. Me, here I am, brain the size of a planet...”

“And they ask me to take you to the bridge,” Esteban finished.

Jake’s jaw dropped so fast it actually hurt.

“ _Que_?”

“You...” There were words he needed to finish that statement. Query. Both. “You quoted Hitchhiker’s.”

Esteban raised an eyebrow at Jake, clearly stating that yes, he had done this thing and would Jake kindly explain why this was shocking.

His own answer was a stupid grin. He imagine it was stupid, anyway. It felt daft. _He_ felt daft. “You know Hitchhiker’s.”

“I like reading.”

He liked reading. Ex-army and he liked reading. “What do you do? Like, for work?”

“Not much. I was navy. Honourable discharge.”

Someone asked with Jake’s voice, “What happened?”

Esteban looked away somewhere else, a curl slipping loose from the long tail to brush his cheek. “I was UEBC. Punctured lung.”

UEBC. Jake ran the acronym against his mental database. Spanish, navy, underwater demo and combat. “You were a frogman.”

Esteban nodded curtly, the once.

And with a punctured lung, however fit he got, he couldn’t go back to it. “Christ. That’s harsh. Still, least you didn’t wash out like me. I got a dishonourable, me, had a bad habit of mouthing off to the wrong people and sticking my digital nose where it wasn’t wanted or needed.” He gave a sheepish look. “I do security now. People pay me to mess about in their systems and my sister hits me less when I see her.”

The topic change was clearly the right tactic since the dark look that had been gathering in Esteban’s eyes lightened, his attention coming back out to Jake rather than in to whatever demons he carried out of service with him. “Mm?”

“Sisters, man, they’re brutes, the lot of them. Got any?”

“No.”

“Well, take my word for it, they’re bullies. Showing randomly to inspect your apartment, throwing out your mould experiments and demanding you do dishes, mine even insists that you can’t wear the same shorts for five days in a row.”

The disbelieving look made Jake grin again. “Okay, well, maybe not, but jeans are fine for a week.”

“You haven’t...?”

“These? No. I was horribly and spectacularly sick after I went clubbing the other night. These are on day two. I think.” But, most importantly, Esteban had stopped thinking about his discharge and injury. “Another? My shout.”

“Shout?”

“Sorry, right, my round.”

“ _Si._ Another would be good.”

Jake got up and headed to the bar for a new round and a bowl of fries to save another drunk and disorderly charge.

*~*~*

They parted ways after the bowl of fries was finished. Esteban caught a cab back to wherever he was staying and Jake drove himself back to the apartment.

He beelined for the computer, fingers dancing over the keyboard.

Pooch was right about one thing. Jake did a lot of foolish things, but he wasn’t dumb enough to just accept Esteban Cora on face level. Not after being called by him to bail him out.

Maybe it wasn’t suspicious, but Jake wasn’t running the risk. He liked being free and not interrogated and not brought up on charges relating to defection, treason or nuking a small island.

His gut twisted at the thought, the flash of somber eyes from under that damn hat.

Esteban Cora. Spanish, entered the navy at eighteen, served with UEBC most of his career until he was injured during a mission and his lung punctured. Full recovery, but he couldn’t go back and took the medical discharge, a medal and a ticket to America.

On the surface, it all checked out. Which meant nothing.

Jake pulled off his shirt and kicked off his shoes, relaxing into his seat. “Okay, baby, lets see what we can work out of you. You and I are old friends, I know _all_ the ways to get you to let me in.”

As always, she was obliging to him, layers peeling away through the system. Checking for tampering, for changes, for anything out of place. Cross referencing everything against one another. Start with the obvious and go back further, roll it back further and further. Family. Education. Friends. Childhood. Any time inconsistency could be evidence of a trap, of an alteration set up to make Esteban into someone else, to make him into Esteban Cora.

Handsome, Spanish Esteban who was damaged from war and spoke with enviable economy of words. As Pooch said, it was almost too good, too perfect to be real, so close to what they’d lost and so promising.

It would be easy to let him fill that space between them, where the three of them had once fallen into the easy camaraderie of the junior officers and where now there was an empty silence instead of an amused one.

Hours passed.

Esteban remained frustratingly–tantalisingly–real.


	5. Chapter 5

Jake let himself into Pooch’s house around half-eleven in the morning. Jo was out with the girls, some school trip, and Pooch would be at work until midday, but he needed to not be alone in his place for a while.

The house smelt warm and inviting. The last traces of breakfast hung in the air, toast and porridge and coffee that was still in the pot. Jake rinsed it out and started a new pot brewing, watching out the back window while he listened to it bubble and percolate.

His phone chimed, vibrating in his pocket but he ignored it in favour of digging out a mug and pouring himself a cup of coffee. He hadn’t slept last night, hadn’t been willing to try with Cougar’s ghost so close by and the coffee was his hope of making some sort of sense when Pooch got home and yelled at him for breaking into his house again.

It wasn’t breaking in, not really. He was just saving them getting him a key cut by picking the lock. And they let him install the security system, which was clearly an invitation to come in when he needed to visit.

He sipped at his drink while he poked through the cupboards until he found what he was looking for. The big, dumb, ugly mug painted like a cat, the handle made of its tail and the one with “World’s No. 1 Dad” on it.

The “No. 1” had been scribbled out and replaced with “Worst” in permanent marker years ago. Jake took them down out and washed them of the dust that had gathered in them since Pooch and Jo had moved into this place. Drying them, he watched the back yard. There were no scorch marks on the porch from Clay stubbing out his cigarettes with thoughtless ease on the wood and no oil stains from the team sitting out the back and cleaning their guns while watching Jo and the girls play on the grass.

“Goddamnit, Jensen!”

He smiled slightly, drying the mugs carefully with a dish towel.

“I told you to stop breaking into my house, you crazy bastard. What if one of the neighbours calls the cops on you, huh?”

“Your neighbours all know me. I took them brownies with Jolene once. Last Christmas.” He set the mugs on the kitchen table as Pooch came in.

Pooch froze, his frustrated annoyance fading away in the long seconds it took him to speak. “Why’d you drag those out?”

“Same reason you kept them, I guess. God’s in the details. Cougs told me that one.”

“I’m going to regret this.” Pooch directed his statement to the ceiling. “What details, Jake?”

“When you make up a life for someone, you leave tracks. You can’t help it.” He sat down at the table with his coffee. “Coffee’s fresh, by the way.”

Pooch watched him carefully as he poured himself a cup and sat down at the opposite end of the table, like he was worried Jake might explode at any moment.

Jake pretended not to notice. “Tiny things. Digital finger prints. Fuck, even I can’t help it. I told you that when I made this for us. We can’t ever be a hundred percent safe. Someone digs far enough, they _will_ work out that someone’s changed things.”

“Has someone found us?” Pooch’s voice was tight with fear. “Do I need to call Jolene?”

“No.” He hadn’t meant to make Pooch think that. “Shit, no. We’re fine. I’m just explaining, right, how it works. That you can’t change things and have no one ever notice if they want to.”

Pooch sighed out a breath, sinking into the kitchen chair like someone had turned his bones to jelly. “Okay. Sure. You dig enough, you eventually find out if something’s changed.”

“Yesterday, I got a call from Esteban. He asked me to come and help him sort out bail.” He didn’t watch Pooch’s face, didn’t want to know his reaction, really. “So I did.”

Inhale through that gap in his front teeth. Not happy.

“It was just a stupid mix up. Drunk and disorderly. They let him out, he took me for a drink and lunch as a thank you. We chatted a bit, he drops that he’s got a medical discharge. Punctured lung, can’t dive anymore. Go our separate ways and I go home to dig, because I’m not half as dumb as you and Clay thought I was sometimes. I’m fucking Special Forces, I can smell a set up.”

He took off his glasses and dropped them on the table, rubbing his eyes. He was tired. He was fucking exhausted.

In his deep breaths he could still smell leather and blood.

“Jake?”

“I dug. Handsome Spanish guy, ex-military, discharged, I’m not stupid, Pooch. It’s a lead in. Clay hurt, it fucking hurt like being shot but he was always that bit reserved, bit distant. Bit... fucked up in ways I didn’t want to go near. But Cougar, man. I nursed that fucker for six months after that fucking mission. I looked after his burns, drugged him to sleep, restrained him when he got violent and hallucinated, I did fucking all of it and they don’t know that but they have to know that the way at us, at _me_ , is through that.” He wasn’t making sense. He felt he was entitled to that after the last twenty four hours. Last month. Last decade. Last fucking life time.

“You dug,” Pooch prompted gently.

“There’s _nothing_.” He leaned his elbows on the table, pressed his weight into his lean, balls of his hands against his eyes. “There is fucking nothing out of place. I checked everything. I checked him. I checked his parents. I checked his grandparents. Aunts, uncles, schools, holidays, flights, missions, everything that I could think of, I checked it. I dug until I hit fucking bed rock and then I kept going and I didn’t. Find. Anything.”

Silence reigned.

“Isn’t that, good?”

“No!” Jake slammed his hands onto the table. 

Pooch startled back, more confused than ever.

“No, it’s not good! Because it means he might be real, Pooch! And this shit doesn’t happen to us, we’re Losers, man! Things like this don’t happen to us, we don’t get second chances or vaguely okay endings or... Anything like that shit! That doesn’t happen to us! To _me_.” The tightness in his chest was choking his words, pushing them down while it pushed them out, because there wasn’t space for it and them. “Cougar’s _dead_ and I don’t get some chance to be okay with that!”

“Jake.” Pooch stood up slowly.

Jake watched the stupid kitty mug.

“Maybe the universe is just looking out for you for once.”

“I don’t need a new best friend. I don’t _want_ one. I shouldn’t get to sit in a bar with some guy and laugh and enjoy his company because he reminds me- And he’s still dead.”

Pooch had moved over to him by now, hand coming to rest on his shoulder. It was warm, heavy. Accusing as he felt the stump of Pooch’s amputated finger press to his shoulder as Pooch squeezed his hand.

“He’s still dead. And Esteban isn’t him. But he makes me feel like maybe-” He shook his head and dropped it into his arms. “Fuck. I should’ve slept before I came here.”

“Yeah, probably. But I’m glad you came here instead of doing anything else.” Pooch’s hand caught his elbow and started pulling him up. “You’re allowed to have a life, Jake. You lost your best friend. He wouldn’t want you not live because he died. In fact, that was pretty much the point, wasn’t it? That you _live_.”

Jake nodded weakly, letting Pooch guide him towards the living room.

“It’s been eighteen months. You’re allowed to stop grieving eventually.”

The couch was soft when Pooch pushed him onto it. He just sat there, staring at the blurs that were the photos on the wall.

Another shove made him lie down. He toed off his sneakers on automatic, Jolene didn’t let shoes on furniture. A blanket was tugged down over him.

“Get some sleep. Do not leave without telling me or Jo, right?”

“Sure, Pooch.” He was fucking tired. He was tired of being so tired. Was that how Cougar had felt in the end, tired of not sleeping, of being exhausted and bone weary in the soul?

He didn’t get a chance to think much further on it because he fell asleep to the sound of Martha Stewart explaining how to grow orchids in a pot.


End file.
